Archive | February 13, 2015

The Mom Test and “Tell me About Your Story.” (A blog post)

Feb13

I’m working on two stories right now – one for Mobbing Midnight, an anthology of Crow stories, and one for Queers Destroy Sci-Fi. Both are in draft form, and I’m flailing a bit about both, as is normal.

And then I got on the phone with my mom. I was telling her about Crow Cage, my story for Mobbing Midnight… and I started to find places, just reviewing the story in my mind, where my Mom would say “I don’t get it.”

And going from there, I was able to feel the points where the story needed to improve, and feel excited about it again. So: The Mom Test. Will someone mostly unfamiliar with my writing and the way I think be able to “get” this story, and, if not, how can I improve it?

And then I was talking to cluudle about Scaling the Ivory Tower, my submission for QDSF. She said “tell me about your story.”

I thought about it. I hemmed and hawed. And then I laid out an outline of what I WANTED the story to be. Again: clarification, brightening, new energy. I knew what I was missing, and I knew how it could get better.

Do you have a similar trick when you’re stuck? Have you ever tried talking the story out with a friend – or a stranger – to get past the “what do I do now?” stage?

Mobbing Midnight’s Kickstarter is almost to 10%!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/898413.html. You can comment here or there.

Ideas for post-apoc crews/people wandering around in my brain

Feb13

Outside Help – a crew that bounces from population base to population base, providing jack-of-all-trades outside help (they got their name from a challenge back in school where they provided, as you might guess, outside help).

Historian – a single woman (and perhaps a bodyguard Kept, later), moves a similar circuit, writing down people’s memories of history and, a la Foxfire, everything they can remember about their profession pre-apoc.

Square Miles – a crew decides to rehab a portion of the US in square mile portions, laid out with a grid of walls, one square mile a year (the goal being a 10×10 mile grid when they’re done).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/898228.html. You can comment here or there.